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Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

roomkey.com

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Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#21

Post by whitepoplar »

ggm wrote: post #20
eldavido wrote: post #18

I've spent the last three years building a hotel property management system. I hate OTAs. They are gross middlemen who charge criminally high commissions to hotel operators. And as much as I philosophically support what you're doing here, both Roomkey in general and Scout in particular, you're barking up the wrong tree. At the point where a customer is searching on Expedia or booking.com, you've lost. These sites hav…

Not wanting to be stupid (ok.. losing battle) but what exactly are these huge expedia rewards? I've done quite a lot of travel and booking through them, and frankly, I am unsure what benefit I've got from it.

I like the Hotels.com rewards program. It's like a punch card, and you're not locked into a particular hotel chain. Stay 10 nights, get a credit for the average cost of those 10 nights. They also price match if you find a cheaper rate anywhere else.

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#22

Post by degenerate »

eldavido wrote: post #18

I've spent the last three years building a hotel property management system. I hate OTAs. They are gross middlemen who charge criminally high commissions to hotel operators. And as much as I philosophically support what you're doing here, both Roomkey in general and Scout in particular, you're barking up the wrong tree. At the point where a customer is searching on Expedia or booking.com, you've lost. These sites hav…

What I completely don't understand is, I have tried calling hotels directly when looking at the hotels.com/expedia price, and asking if they can give me that rate directly or even a little cheaper. They never can. They always say "you'll have to book it through them" to get that rate. I've tried this at least a dozen times, always with the same answer.

Do these chains have some kind of written agreement with the websites where they are NOT allowed to undercut those prices, ever?

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#23

Post by degenerate »

Eridrus wrote: post #13

So, installing an extension which requires "Read and change data on all websites you visit" to save a few bucks isn't going to happen.

If instead it said "Read and change data on Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity" then I would be OK with it. But unfortunately they want full access!

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#24

Post by tuananh »

degenerate wrote: post #22
eldavido wrote: post #18

I've spent the last three years building a hotel property management system. I hate OTAs. They are gross middlemen who charge criminally high commissions to hotel operators. And as much as I philosophically support what you're doing here, both Roomkey in general and Scout in particular, you're barking up the wrong tree. At the point where a customer is searching on Expedia or booking.com, you've lost. These sites hav…

What I completely don't understand is, I have tried calling hotels directly when looking at the hotels.com/expedia price, and asking if they can give me that rate directly or even a little cheaper. They never can. They always say "you'll have to book it through them" to get that rate. I've tried this at least a dozen times, always with the same answer. Do these chains have some kind of written agreement with the webs…

> Do these chains have some kind of written agreement with the websites where they are NOT allowed to undercut those prices, ever?

yes.

However, hotels can offer lower price via their own membership program

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#25

Post by eldavido »

degenerate wrote: post #22
eldavido wrote: post #18

I've spent the last three years building a hotel property management system. I hate OTAs. They are gross middlemen who charge criminally high commissions to hotel operators. And as much as I philosophically support what you're doing here, both Roomkey in general and Scout in particular, you're barking up the wrong tree. At the point where a customer is searching on Expedia or booking.com, you've lost. These sites hav…

What I completely don't understand is, I have tried calling hotels directly when looking at the hotels.com/expedia price, and asking if they can give me that rate directly or even a little cheaper. They never can. They always say "you'll have to book it through them" to get that rate. I've tried this at least a dozen times, always with the same answer. Do these chains have some kind of written agreement with the webs…

Yes, it's called a MFN clause ("most favored nation") and is a standard deal term the channels negotiate with the hotels. They accept it because they have no choice.

Hotels play all sorts of games with this, including throwing in free stuff if you book direct ("it's the same rate") and doing "non-advertised" rates through loyalty and reward programs.

If you can't book directly with the hotel, it's very likely they don't have technology sophisticated enough to do a direct booking. You'd be surprised how bad hotel tech is. And the thing is, none of the independents want to spend anything to improve the situation. It's honestly madness.

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#26

Post by wmeredith »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #6
whitepoplar wrote: post #3

You may want to reconsider the design of your logo: https://scoutapp.com/

This seems impossibly similar to be an accident.

Stuff like this is really common if you use fiverr or any of the other super cheap logo /design generator sites. You’ll end up saving a couple hundred bucks but you’re likely just paying someone to ripoff something else if what you get back is any good. I saw it a lot in my agency days.

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#27

Post by [deleted] »

degenerate wrote: post #22
eldavido wrote: post #18

I've spent the last three years building a hotel property management system. I hate OTAs. They are gross middlemen who charge criminally high commissions to hotel operators. And as much as I philosophically support what you're doing here, both Roomkey in general and Scout in particular, you're barking up the wrong tree. At the point where a customer is searching on Expedia or booking.com, you've lost. These sites hav…

What I completely don't understand is, I have tried calling hotels directly when looking at the hotels.com/expedia price, and asking if they can give me that rate directly or even a little cheaper. They never can. They always say "you'll have to book it through them" to get that rate. I've tried this at least a dozen times, always with the same answer. Do these chains have some kind of written agreement with the webs…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#28

Post by manicminer »

degenerate wrote: post #22
eldavido wrote: post #18

I've spent the last three years building a hotel property management system. I hate OTAs. They are gross middlemen who charge criminally high commissions to hotel operators. And as much as I philosophically support what you're doing here, both Roomkey in general and Scout in particular, you're barking up the wrong tree. At the point where a customer is searching on Expedia or booking.com, you've lost. These sites hav…

What I completely don't understand is, I have tried calling hotels directly when looking at the hotels.com/expedia price, and asking if they can give me that rate directly or even a little cheaper. They never can. They always say "you'll have to book it through them" to get that rate. I've tried this at least a dozen times, always with the same answer. Do these chains have some kind of written agreement with the webs…

For rates that are available to everyone, the hotel chains are generally contractually restricted from offering a lower rate than the OTA. Currently the Priceline/Expedia duopoly wields a huge amount of power which IMO is ultimately bad for the consumer.

The way that hotel chains can undercut the OTA price is via their loyalty programs. If you sign up as a member then you can very often receive a lower rate. All the major chains have been running campaigns around these loyalty rates recently and one study has suggested it may be having an impact [https://www.kalibrilabs.com/press-1/2017/10/26/new-study-fro...].

Due to our unique relationship with the hotel chains, Room Key (both our .com site and Scout) is the only hotel search engine that has access to these loyalty rates across multiple chains. This is how Scout is able to notify the user of a better rate in so many cases for the big chains. We'd love to expand to have more hotels join us and allow us access to their loyalty rates as well.

We've found through our research and user testing that OTA users fall broadly into two camps. First, those who believe, rightly or wrongly, that the OTA rate is always going to be cheaper. Second, those who use OTAs as a search engine to find the right hotel but then go and manually compare the OTA rate vs the rates available directly on the hotel's own site.

Usually the direct deal is better when you consider the entire package - lower loyalty rate + easier cancellation + points + free wifi etc. Being the customer of the hotel who has an interest in the quality of your stay vs a third party does count for something. I believe we'll start to see that count for more as time goes on.

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#29

Post by manicminer »

degenerate wrote: post #23
Eridrus wrote: post #13

So, installing an extension which requires "Read and change data on all websites you visit" to save a few bucks isn't going to happen.

If instead it said "Read and change data on Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity" then I would be OK with it. But unfortunately they want full access!

Thank you for pointing this out. We'll look at this and see if we can enumerate the OTAs on which Scout works as you suggest.

I can assure you that the extension collects only what it needs to do in order to function.

Re: Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents

#30

Post by manicminer »

bedros wrote: post #7
manicminer wrote: post #2

Nine months ago, an article "For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies" sparked some interesting discussion on HN [1]. Many of the topics discussed informed the development of our new product, Scout. The perception of many travelers is that the best hotel prices are to be found at the big online travel agencies. The hotel chains have recently been attempting to alter this perception by offering lowe…

I use firefox as my main browser, it's a shame I need to switch to chrome to get scout functionality

A Firefox version is high on our list
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